After a weekend filled with short fields and a Grade I stakes race that included only three horses, Santa Anita canceled its eight-race Thursday program on Sunday because of insufficient entries.

The racing office could not fill the card on its first attempt Saturday and a second effort Sunday provided no better results. It’s the second cancellation during the track’s spring-summer meet after a Thursday card on April 27 was lost because of a lack of horses.

Racing is scheduled to resume Friday with a nine-race program. Santa Anita will be open Thursday for simulcast wagering.

“After looking at entries for Thursday, we decided it was in the best interest of our customers to put on three solid race cards, Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” said Joe Morris in a statement. Morris is The Stronach Group’s Senior Vice President of West Coast Operations.

“The races from Thursday that attracted enough entries will be added over those three days to give horsemen some additional racing opportunities.”

Before this year, racing at Santa Anita had not been canceled because of a shortage of entries since 2011. Three times during Hollywood Park’s summer meet in 2010 racing was disrupted because there weren’t enough horses to fill the races.

In an exclusive interview with the Southern California News Group last week, trainer John Sadler said there are a lot of steps that can be taken to improve the Southern California product.

“I think there’s a lot of stuff we need to work on, clearly,” he said. “We’re still doing pretty well considering what we have to work with.”

Of the problem with short fields, Sadler said: “It’s about stabling. We don’t have a really good stabling plan. What needs to happen, and I think everybody agrees with me, is that Del Mar needs to stay open year-round so we have two big major tracks to train on.<QA.

“I think it starts there with field size. There are a lot of trainers here in California that get a lot of interest, get a lot of horses sent to them, but the stabling (problem), it’s got to start there if you want to build up the field size.”

Tim Ritvo, the Chief Operating Officer of The Stronach Group, which owns Santa Anita, was sent to the Arcadia track two weeks ago in an effort to help clean up the problems Santa Anita, along with other Southern California racing venues, have encountered in recent years.

“I’d be willing to re-introduce myself to Mr. Ritvo and make myself available if he’d like to talk,” Sadler said.

In an interview with TVG on Sunday, Ritvo, while not pinpointing the blame on horsemen, said Santa Anita has to start by looking in the mirror. He said there are 3,100 horses stabled in Southern California and changes need to be made to encourage owners and trainers to run more.

The recent problems plaguing Santa Anita come following a wet winter that caused the track to cancel three racing dates during its winter-spring meet, the first cancellations because of rain since 2010 when track officials were forced to scrap five racing dates.